Tim Ferriss Show Notes

These are my notes from some of my favorite episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show – the best and most useful podcast on the internet, in my opinion.

Tom Morello

• Watership Down (book by Richard Adams)
• Dangerous times demand dangerous songs
• Prophets of Rage, The Nightwatchman (Tom’s bands)
• ‘’Are you taking over, or are you taking orders? Are you going backwards, or are you going forwards?” – Joe Strummer, The Clash
• The time to start writing songs is now. When Tom was a guitar teacher, he had people write a song during their first guitar lesson (with two chords).  Their homework was to write another one.  Within three weeks they had a six-song catalog of original music.

Rich Roll

• Mood follows action. You can’t think your way into the mood you want to be in.  You have to take action.  The behavior comes first.
  • Take action despite how you feel about it.
  • If you want to change your mood, you have to take action. This means work out or play the guitar, regardless of how you feel about it.
• Orienteering: a timed adventure sport that requires participants to use a map and compass to navigate from one checkpoint to another in a specific order.
• Zone 2 training: low to moderate intensity aerobic exercise (60-70% of max heart rate)
  • Conversational pace: you can talk while you do it
• Gravity blanket
• No phone calls, no meetings, and training done every day before 12 p.m. (85% success rate – 6 out of 7 days per week)
• Rich does 1 month off the grid every year
• For long-term commitments (far into the future), ask yourself: if this were next Tuesday, would I want to do it?
• Who are you becoming?
  • What does this look like in 1, 3, 5, 10 years
• You don’t have to suffer to create (navigate from grace and joy)
• Books
  • Finding Ultra by Rich Roll
  • Effortless by Greg McKewan
• Be kinder than you think is necessary

Ryan Flaherty

• Speed is teachable
• The most important thing you can teach your kids is how to run properly, then the rest of the sports will come easily
• Speed is a skill you can learn and train
• To increase speed, increase lower-body strength without increasing muscle mass. It’s about increasing strength without increasing weight.
  • Lower-body strength/body mass ratio is what’s important (Improve strength-to-bodyweight ratio. Add strength without adding muscle mass.)
• Increase stride length (circle) to increase speed
• Running form: Midfoot strike, directly under the pelvis. Heel goes over the opposite knee during the circle.
  • Overstriding = foot landing in front of pelvis – this is bad. Should feel like your foot is landing underneath you or behind you when running.
    • Don’t reach out in front of you to run. Overstriding is bad.
• Speed Training
  • Hex Bar Deadlift: This is the most important exercise you can do to improve speed
    • Start at the depth of a jump
    • 3.2x bodyweight (1 rep max) is elite
    • Hands aligned right outside of legs
    • Drop the weight at the top of the lift (don’t descend with the weight)
      • Descending with the weight will add muscle mass. You want to add strength without adding mass.
  • 7 Way Hips (at least 2x per week)
  • Prolific Athletes (Ryan’s YouTube channel)
  • DCT Proflex (ankle mobility)
  • Don’t ever use knee extension machines
  • Don’t Olympic lift unless you’re an Olympic lifter
  • Do box squats (knees parallel to the ground)
    • 2 types: (1) sit completely down, (2) touch + go (use both types)
  • Do one-foot seated jump squats
    • From a seated position
    • Jump off one foot and land on the same foot
    • The other foot stays one inch off the ground
    • Jump as high as you can and knee tuck
    • Progression: jump onto box
  • Glute Mead Exercises
  • You can only improve so many things at once. Focus on what you will get the most bang for your buck out of and start there.  Then you can add things on.
• Coaches
  • Charlie Francis
  • Tony Campbell
  • Dan Pfaff
  • Buddy Morris
  • Louie Simmons
• To lose body fat, eliminate sugar
  • Also increase cardio
• Books
  • The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson
  • Charlie Francis Training System book
  • CS Lewis

Kevin Kelly

• Books
  • Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
  • Cool Tools – Kevin Kelly
  • Walden – Henry David Thoreau
  • What Technology Wants – Kevin Kelly
  • The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide – James Fadiman
  • Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts
  • True Films – Kevin Kelly
  • The Adventures of Johnny Bunko – Daniel H. Pink
    • How to Become Indispensable
  • So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Cal Newport
• Long Now Foundation: fosters long-term thinking and social responsibility
• Voluntary simplicity: reducing unnecessary material consumption
• 1,000 true fans: the idea that to be a successful creator, you need 1,000 die-hard fans who will purchase anything you produce.
• Writing is a way to find out what you think. It’s a process of discovery.
  • Writing is an idea-generating machine
• Don’t just work on things you can do. Work on things ONLY you can do.  That’s how you (1) prioritize your work, and (2) specialize.
  • If other people can do it, it’s less important. Focus on the things ONLY you can do.
  • Life is figuring out what ONLY you can do at that point in time and doing that. That’s your calling.
• If you knew you were going to die in a year, what would you do to make the biggest impact on the largest number of people?
  • Work on that
• Urbanity leads to population drop (birth rates drop)
• People who are privileged should have children
  • Have more than one kid – it’s a gift to the kid to have siblings
  • After three kids, you don’t have to expend more energy as a parent
• 1x per week: technological sabbatical. Every 7 years, take a true sabbatical.
  • i.e. every Saturday, no screen
• Okay to generally go 3-4 days before you get an email
• Josh Waitzkin
• Website: True Films (also a book)
  • Films: Man on Wire, King of Cong, State of Mind: The Psychology of Control
• Success is when you make a new job for yourself that didn’t exist before. You make your own path.  You can’t be categorized.  Not just a surfer.  Not just a skater.  Not just a musician.  Not just a writer.  Can’t be categorized.  You are your own thing
• The PanArt Hang drum
• First order access in your workspace.
  • Don’t have things hidden behind other things.  Have everything ready to go, labeled, organized, plugged in and ready to go.  (Adam Savage)
• He has an assistant/researcher
  • One person has both jobs. Rare to find someone who can do both.  The person with appropriate skills is a librarian.
• kk.org (Kevin Kelly blog – good model for mine)

Dr. Peter Attia

• The Manhattan Project
• Books
  • Gary Tubbs – Taming the Dragon
  • Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me
  • Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman
  • 10% Happier – Dan Harris
• A good scientist: when confronted with conflicting data, they face it
• Amateur scientists typically start for personal reasons
• Ultra-long swimming: anything over 16 miles
• Prolonged fasting begins at 24 hours
• All day pace = 65% of top speed (the speed you can keep for 10-12 hours)
  • Long-distance hunter speed
• The majority of the calories you burn, you burn while you are doing nothing
• If over 40 years old and interested in prolonging longevity, there is an 80% change you will die from one of four diseases:
  1. Cardiovascular disease
  2. Cerebrovascular disease (stroke)
  3. Cancer
  4. Neurodegenerative disease (Alzheimer’s, dementia – degeneration in brain)
• So if you’re in your 40s or beyond and want to prolong your life, your strategy must focus on combating these 4 diseases. Reduce the risk of these diseases as much as humanly possible
• What do they have in common? They’re metabolic diseases.
  • Restricting calories prolongs life by delaying the onset of metabolic diseases
    • Must limit refined carbs and sugar
  • Avoid:
    • Too many calories
    • Too many carbs
    • Too much sugar (especially fructose/refined sugar)
  • Strength/bodyweight ratio is what matters
    • HEXBAR DEADLIFT
  • Meditation: three types
    • Transcendental
    • Open Monitoring (mindfulness)
    • Focused attention

Christopher Sommer

GST = Gymnastic Strength Training (“high-level body weight strength training”)

Correct range of motion is the foundation of everything.

Handstands

• Pacing is important for tendons and connective tissues when developing handstands
• Require mobility in shoulders, forearms and spine

Press Handstands

• Shoulders directly above hands
• No jump
• Engage traps to pull hips over shoulders
• Maintain a flat back
• Use the low back to pull legs up into a handstand
• Get deltoids to the sides of your ears (Engage shoulders. Shoulders are raised in proper handstand.  Depressed shoulders = incorrect technique.).
• Head straight down. No arch in back.

Back Bridge

• The low back shouldn’t bend barely at all
• Upper back bends
• *Straight arms (no bend at elbows)
• *Should not feel stress in the lower back
• Shoulder pain can be caused by bicep and/or forearm tightness

Strength Tests

• 1) Hanging leg lift: core strength + hamstring flexibility
• 2) Back bridge

Joints And Connective Tissues

• Can’t train until you crawl out of the gym if you’re a professional athlete, because you have to be back the next day. Don’t train until you can’t train tomorrow.  It’s counterproductive.
• Cannot cheat time for joint and connective tissue development. The injuries take longer to repair than they do to avoid in the first place. (This is why steroid users get hurt.  The muscles develop faster than the joints and connective tissues – so the joints and connective tissues snap).
• Fundamental work is necessary to make high-intensity work possible and safe
• Gymnastics should not beat up your body. If it does, you’re doing it wrong.
• You need an optimal surplus to avoid injury. This means you always have a little extra range of motion and a little extra strength above what’s required to execute the moves you’re doing.  This extra strength and flexibility are what protect you from injury when something goes wrong.  Not “if” something goes wrong, but “when” something goes wrong.  If you’re riding the cutting edge of what you are maximally capable of, then an injury will happen when something goes wrong.  *Train for when things go wrong.
• If you lack strength or mobility, move backward first and develop the strength and mobility you need before trying to move forward. Always get the strength and mobility base first.
• There are no old, stupid gymnasts. The ones who lasted long enough to be old gymnasts took care of their joints.
• Connective tissue gets 1/10 the blood flow of muscle tissue. Thus, it takes much longer to build and repair.  This is why you must progress slowly.
• Guys who push through pain have a short shelf life
• Tendons and connective tissues don’t have their own blood supply, so you need to exercise the muscles around them to get blood flow to them to help them repair. If certain moves hurt, then only do moves that don’t hurt, but keep getting blood to the area as much as you can without pain.
• Use bands to help build and repair shoulders
• Stretching the lats can provide relief for the shoulders

Injury vs. Fatigue

• The sharpness of the pain is what tells you whether it’s an injury or fatigue
• Fatigue: if you stop, the pain immediately subsides
• Injury: if you stop, the pain immediately gets worse

Notes for Beginner Gymnasts

• Most beginners should spend 6-7 months purely on mobility work. Developing strength and mobility in all joints and connective tissues.  Most people need extensive preliminary work to achieve full range of motion in all joints.  Expect 6-7 months.
• ***Do the mobility work early. The mobility work at the beginning is the gold.  It’s the key to the whole process.  Don’t miss the gold at the beginning.
• Most beginners need to improve strength and mobility in hamstrings, shoulders, biceps, forearms, and hips. Particularly, shoulder extension.
• Development of a gymnast
  • 1) Build mobility
  • 2) Build core
  • 3) Build strength
  • 4) Build dynamic strength
• Be meticulous about technique
• Mobility is what you need to be a functional and healthy human being. It’s not just for acrobats.
• Nothing in gymnastics is aesthetic. Everything is for more power.  The aesthetic is just the side effect, not the reason for it.

Exercises

• 1) Jefferson curl
• 2) Back bridge
• 3) Press handstand
• 4) Front lever
• 5) Straddle planche
• 6) Muscle-ups (no kip)
• 7) Back lever

Progression + Performance Tips

• If you get stuck at one point in the progression of an exercise, go all the way back to the bottom (the very first progression), and do all of the progressions again until you can execute them with perfect technique, for repetitions. MASTER EACH STEP.
• The key is consistency over your whole training block (map out your training over the next 4 years, and 8 years, and be consistent).
• Training is a multi-year process. It takes 3-4 years to achieve 75-80% of your genetically possible maximum (Achieving this puts you in the top 1% of the population.  Average person can reach this with proper training.).  It takes 3-4 more years to achieve 90%.  And 3-4 more years to achieve 95% (elite, full-time athletes).
• Your body is not a painting. You don’t work until it’s done, and then stop.  Fitness is for life.  Every single day, as long as you live.  There is no escape.
• Wanting what you want right now is the sign of an immature athlete and an immature person. A mature athlete (and a mature person) embraces delayed gratification and performs the progressions necessary to achieve what they want.  Mature athletes (and mature people) remain the best for the longest.
• Practice underloads when you are fatigued (less than you are maximally capable of). Example: end your workout by mastering simpler, easier exercises.
• Embrace doing each day less than you are maximally capable of. This is how you avoid over-stress and overuse injuries.  (For me, this is true in life as well as training.  In training, over-stress and overuse manifest as injuries.  In life, they manifest as anxiety and burnout).  “Leave a little in the bank every day.”
• Be observant and ask questions

Competition

• Successful repetitions > competence > confidence > success in competition
• Replicate pressure in training. Ideally, you want to make competition less pressure than training.
• “We don’t rise the level of our hopes, we fall to the level of our training.”
• Always be open to learning more.
• World-class coaches are straight with you. The only people who talk shit are the wannabes.
• Focus on yourself and doing your thing. Not competitors or what they’re going to do.  Do what you do and let the rest take care of itself.
• 3 Keys to success at anything: 1) be consistent, 2) master the basics, 3) be patient
• Vision + practical steps + stick with it = success

Warm-Ups

• 10-15 minute warm up for one hour workout (though the whole workout might be mobility work if there are range of motion deficits)
• Take the time to mobilize and warm up the joints before you start.
• Do pre-strength to get the muscles warm and firing before full explosion

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